ORPHEUS PROJECT: A STUDY PROPOSAL FOR A MARS ISRU PLANT

摘要

Space exploration has always been drastically constrained by the launchable mass, this is extremely important asrna spacecraft needs to be returned to Earth because of the way back-propellant.rnThe growing interest for Mars exploration and its eventual manned colonization impose to test new technologiesrnand try different approaches to the problem. A possible solution is to install an In Situ Resource Utilization,rnISRU, platform on the surface of Mars, able to produce the needed propellant using the resources available in thernMartian environment.rnOrpheus Project is a technological demonstrator whose purpose is to show the advantages of an In SiturnPropellant Production, ISPP, instead of carrying all the extra propellant from Earth. The main task of this projectrnis to show that the weight of the propellant produced by the ISPP plant is greater than the one of the producingrnsystem itself.rnTwo different scenarios have been investigated: A Small Size Mission (SSM), the technological demonstrator,rnmore conservative, with a contained launch mass, able to bring back to Earth 3 kg producing C_2H_4/O_2 in situ. ArnLarge size Mission (LSM), the full scale mission, more futuristic, designed to show that is possible to producernenough propellant to launch a manned module (about 2250 Kg) from a Martian human base.rnThis paper mainly focuses on the first mission, the technological demonstrator, its design and its feasibility.